An extraordinary interview by Bill Moyers that needs to be watched by every member of Congress who believes the marketplace serves us best with health care coverage.

Bill Moyers interviews Wendell Potter who formerly held a variety of positions at CIGNA Corporation over 15 years, serving most recently as head of corporate communications and as the company's chief corporate spokesman.

Reform Rx - Weekend Juice

Once in a while you need a good kick to get the adrenalin flowing. Bob Cesca's blog entry on Huffington Post entitled "If You Don't Want the Public Option, Get the Hell Out of the Way" does the trick!

Reform Rx - The Two Front Trick

Republican moderates and even some Blue Dog Democrats really lay a trap when they say they support health care reform but balk at costs they say are excessive while opposing a public option which would in fact be the most significant tool in keeping down costs. That’s classic fence sitting to appease lobbyists while attempting to make the right noises for constituents back home.

I do want to commend Congressman Mike Michaud, who is referred to as being in the Blue Dog Coalition as being on record as supporting the public option. Here is part of a statement on his website: “I am, however, supportive of a public insurance option. I believe that if people like their current health insurance that they should be able to keep it and continue to see the doctors that they have grown to trust. But if people don’t like their health insurance or have none, a properly structured public insurance option could provide an affordable alternative.”

So how do we get our Senators off the fence? We need to directly ask them to take sides.

Last night I joined with about twenty of my neighbors at a friend’s home to talk about health care and write letters to Senators Snowe and Collins. The group included local activists and some individuals involved in health care delivery. There was a range of incomes from retired citizens watching the medication costs eat up their savings to middle class parents concerned about their new college grads finding affordable access to care. There was even someone recently laid off. It was a typical cross section of individuals from whom our “moderate” Senators expect to pull a few votes each election. All spoke passionately about the need for health care reform now with a public option.

These people asked Senator Snowe and Collins to take their sides by writing to them with their stories, describing their needs, adding their hopes for their children, sharing their cost concerns, and noting the critical need for a public option to achieve real reform. The longer our Senators engage in the two front trick described in this post’s opening sentence, the more one must be concerned that they may be taking the non-voter side of private insurance companies who oppose substantive health care reform.

Please join these letter writers with your personal letters and help pressure Senator Snowe and Senator Collins to take your side at one of their local Maine addresses.

Reform Rx - Parasite Cure

I just got a typical junk email from “Affordable Coverage”. It is a pretty straightforward scam aimed at getting the recipient to log onto their website and either get infected with malicious spyware or undertake some steps to aid them in stealing your identity. Of course it might even give you some sort of coverage certificate you can print out with a few miles of exclusions, bogus help lines phone numbers and an unhealthy dose of teeny tiny type deductable double talk to ensure you never see a dime.

Pariah schemes blossom best when things are broken. High pressure selling of scam adjustable mortgages reached a fever pitch in a largely unregulated and unwatched financial system that did not work for citizens. The same is true for health care insurance. Our present private system which takes high premiums and then delivers little, creates the conditions in which creative email copywriting of outright pickpocket falsehoods becomes tempting to cyber criminals and enticing to those trapped in difficult situations .

These emails and similar web ads that are “too good to be true” prey on young inexperienced consumers, the working poor, insurance rejection victims, small struggling entrepreneurial businesses, and the newly unemployed. We see examples of this type of con in online pharmacy fraud activity as well. We are necessarily focused on the health care reform debate about many of the larger issues on the table. But let’s not forget that the present system creates lots of social venerability and has real live victims of all kinds of other systemic problems. Another outcome of excellent and substantive coverage for all will be to marginalize these predators.

Reform Rx - Reactions Triggered!

President Obama followed up on the AM Wall Street Journal trigger talk with a clarification that still embraces a public option. It was important enough for him to address in the midst of his Russian trip. Let him know we have his back on this!

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2009
Statement from the President on Health Care Reform

"I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals."

And there was a different reaction that should be a "follow the money" lesson that we ought to heed. Insurers were pretty happy with that trigger talk. Triggers are good for Wall Street profits because they delay heath care reform to residents of America's streets, roads, and alleyways.

From: Condé Nast Portfolio.com

SHARES UP

"Shares of health insurers were up as much as 8 percent at midday on the possible shift in the administration's stance on a public plan, then they gave up some of their gains.

Shares of Aetna Inc and UnitedHealth Group Inc closed 6.3 percent and 4.5 percent higher respectively, while shares of Humana Inc closed more than 3.3 percent higher and WellPoint Inc 2.4 percent."

Reform Rx - Bipartisanship Smog (BS)

Bipartisan health care talk is more about extreme dilution than effective solution. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that the there is a possible opening in the White House door to the “trigger” option on a public plan. If our leaders move blindly forward to achieve reform to get a token bipartisan stamp, we will be ill treated.

Charting the present path of this debate provides an important case study. First, in a historical election, we fought for and won an overwhelming Democratic victory based on issues that included substantive health care reform that covered every single citizen. Ironically the absence of Edward Kennedy due to medical reasons may have allowed voices opposed to a single-payer plan to prevail early on the legislative front. We seemed destined to have to settle for a compromise that offered a public option among insurance plans. And now the effort to delay, dilute, weaken or outright kill a public option is in full swing.

It is almost like watching high stakes poker as all the industry cards are played to put the emphasis on only the finances of health care. The hospital industry ponying up $155 billion in savings as reported in today’s Washington Post or the drug manufacturers $80 billion are beginning to look like bets placed to represent paper savings now but not give us the real heath care reform we need in the long run. A lot of the bipartisan smog around compromise and cost neutrality ignores one thing: our health!

The danger is that compromise killing essential elemental reform of health care will become capitulation. The economic debate is really cost neutral already because no one is proposing raising costs or even not containing cost. The financial concern is largely about whether payments occur out of our pocket in insurance premiums and co-pays which are controlled by profit pursuit rooted in privilege or out of our pockets in taxes to be paid in pursuit of “happiness” or in other words, health care as a right. An outright majority of 57% said in a New York Times/CBS poll that they are willing to pay higher taxes for health care for all and 59% believe the government would do a better job holding down costs than private insurers. The public’s opinion is being purposely obscured.

We gained political power in millions of votes, thousands of house parties and many small donations this last November. That strength is being challenged by the influence of filibuster threat votes, backroom dealing and millions in big donations. Blow away the smog. Write (again and again) to Snowe and Collins. Copy those letters to the White House to let President Obama know we actively back him on standing firm in our interest for a public option as a part of substantive health care reform.

Reform Rx - Recognizing the Opposition

"I happen to be in the camp of great concern that, if we don't have a public option, we won't be able to reform the system." That’s what my Congressperson, Chellie Pingree said in a room full of health care stakeholders in a listening session that included a representative of private insurers. She hears out constituents but takes a straightforward stance. I also had the opportunity to hear her on a full hour MPBN call in conversing in her understanding manner with her ability for candid and open dialog. You know she’s on your side.

So who’s on the side of not supporting a public option? We hear the radio rants and read letters from those fearing the march to socialism. Do they honestly feel that our goals are heartless bureaucratic control of their lives, rationing health care so that they will wallow in illness, and killing free market entrepreneurialism? Well they really are fooled into believing they do but the key to the initial question is “follow the money”.

Following the money is complicated in its details but not in recognizing its beneficiaries. The cash trail directly leads to insurance companies in the multi-trillion dollar health care business. With a great deal of searching, it is difficult to derive the total of US health insurance profits except for a few billion here and several billion there. That information is hidden in company reports that apply enough numbers to satisfy stockholders about the company after tax earnings but fail to disclose the real capital at stake in perpetuating their existence.

It is important to be clear about profits as well. Those after tax earnings do not include all the pre-tax loopholes, high executive salaries with lucrative stock options, administrative inefficiency and dozens of other profit only focused factors that a public option similar to Medicare or the VA system will not need such as huge marketing budgets and denial specialists. Adding up all the money at stake for private insurers makes the mere $28,654,121 given in 2008 campaign donations just to members of Congress look like a rewarding investment.

Thus the radio rants and fear are whipped up by the political power funded by insurance companies. Those involved can’t define their position as being for big insurance company profits, they need to drive it with a philosophy about markets working better and always at ultimate efficiency. And that is exactly what is happening; the ultimate efficiency of those markets is working overtime at preserving their fiefdom of profits.

All this market driven frenzy and supposed efficiency has ignored one thing: our health. It denies care in the name of efficiency; it excludes poor people in the name of markets; it squeezes premiums out of the middle-class in the name of earnings; it serves stockholders in the name of profits in lieu of serving consumers, patients and, health care professionals. Private insurance companies are the opposition, they are precisely what needs to be reformed and they absolutely know that a public plan is that pathway to reform.